You all know that I’ll all about meal planning but for the last three weeks, I haven’t planned a single meal. Want to know why?
Three weeks ago, our fridge freezer decided to go on strike! By the time we realised, the whole freezer had defrosted and everything in the fridge felt way warmer than it should.
Food-wise, we couldn’t salvage much at all as the contents of the freezer were fully defrosted so we weren’t sure how long it had been off for – I’m all about reducing waste but I couldn’t bring myself to cook food or refreeze it in one of our other freezers where there was a chance it was going to be bad.
Lots of people in my Facebook group had some great advice about cooking up a storm and refreezing some of the food to avoid waste but the fact that it was fully defrosted and I couldn’t be sure how long it had been sitting really put me off doing anything but let most of the food go to waste.
The freezer drawers were full of batch cooked meals, yellow stickered bargains as well as what I call my freezer store cupboard drawer which is filled with things like frozen chopped onion, frozen rice bags, garlic, chilli and other meal components that I use when I’m cooking.
I did get a couple of messages suggesting I claim on our home insurance but I’ve never made a claim and I didn’t want to lose my no-claims discount and be faced with an increased premium next year for the sake of what we threw away.
Luckily, the fridge freezer was insured by our appliance insurance so I rang them up straight away and made an appointment to get it sorted although because of work commitments, the first appointment we could book was for five days later. We were OK with that as we figured we could manage five days bearing in mind we had plenty of food in our other two freezers but what we didn’t count on was the fact that on the day of our appointment, the man came and said it was the compressor that had broken and he didn’t have a replacement one on in his van.
That meant a wait while the part was ordered and then there was a further delay as the fitter was ill on the day he was due to come and fit the part and there was no-one else who could come. When he came two days later, he took the fridge apart and then after an hour, broke the news that the part was the right part but the wire was coming out of the wrong side so it wouldn’t fit!
Two weeks and two days had passed by this point and I was pretty much out of patience – the poor man was mortified to be stood in the middle of a dis-assembled fridge telling me that he really wished he’d checked the part before he started. I usually tend to not let these things get to me because, let’s face it, there are definitely worse things that could have happened but I really just wanted to cry at this point.
You really don’t realise just how much you rely on your fridge – take a minute now and go have a look in your fridge. Imagine not being able to safely store everything you have in there.
The replacement part arrived last week and it was finally fitted so this week I have an actual meal plan to share. You have no idea how excited I am to be able to share this week’s meal plan with you…
It’s nothing flash this week but the fact that it’s an actual meal plan is enough for me. 😉
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